The Hermit

The villagers brought her food every day. Kind simple women brought bread and cabbage, berries and nuts and sometimes bits of meat and milk, pints of beer and sometimes even whiskey.

When she first was called to offer herself to the Tribe, she had no fear that they would neglect her. The calling so sure and the people so kind and so in love with their dead. They honored her for honoring the ancestral mound, for keeping company with the blood of their people.

Besides, she had no fear of Death anymore. Not since her last child died in her arms. She would welcome starvation if it brought her close again to that sweet boy’s smile.

So she moved into the tomb, honored to share space with ancient, brittle bones and piles of ashes and endless whispers. She made this her home, and like them relied on the memory of the Tribe to feed her, to keep her alive. She understood more intimately than most that to forget the ancient wisdom was to sever it from the Tribe. She understood this so well, and planted herself to keep the communion between worlds alive, to keep the wisdom flowing forth from the dark ground, so the people would always have access to the knowledge at the beginning of time.

So under the stone mound, she ate with them, prayed with them, slept with them, and listened to their stories, sounding sometimes like wind whipping through trees, or magpies squawking at noon, red flies buzzing on hot stone, ravens flying suddenly North, a small yellow flower bursting into the darkness of the hovel at midnight.

She listened and saw and felt. She honored. Her role was to allow the dead to enter through her the world of the living. And they honored her with food, gifts of shiny things, and gratitude. When she died after many years of service, the world disappeared. For want of someone brave enough to replace her. For flesh without spirit is but sand falling through an hourglass toward the end of it all.